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Tag Archives: bear pond espresso

On our recent visit back to Tokyo, we picked up a bag of freshly-roasted espresso beans from Bear Pond Espresso at their cafe at On the Corner in Shibuya. We love the totally unbranded, shiny, silvery bag — it’s only markings are the roasting batch and date numbers.

American artist Curtis Kulig’s cursive “Love me” graffiti message is a global street art icon, a viral, real-world visual meme that universally resonates. We’ve seen it everywhere and in some unusual places — from NYC to Amsterdam, Brooklyn to Tokyo — in the form of spray-painted graffiti, brush-painted murals and, of course, stickers, like this one we stumbled upon affixed to the tip jar at No. 8 Bear Pond Espresso cafe at On the Corner diner in Shibuya, Tokyo.

Over the weekend we posted about some coffee we had from a third-wave espresso roaster and cafe in Tokyo called Bear Pond Espresso. As our regular readers already know, we here at Global Graphica are kind of obsessed with hunting down the best coffee wherever we go. Here are some pix of the Bear Pond cafe and surrounding area in Tokyo’s Shimokitazawa neighborhood as seen from the street. (The cafe has a policy against taking photos inside without permission, so we just have a few quick snapshots from outside.) Bear Pond is the fussiest, most meticulous and attentive espresso purveyors and coffee roasters we’ve ever met, which is why we like them and their coffee so much. They’re also really nice and have great style. As noted in that earlier post, they only prepare and serve espresso for two and a half hours each day, from 10:30am to 1:00pm. Furthermore, they’ll only sell some of their coffee beans to you if you first take a short course they offer on how to properly prepare the coffee in the Chemex style. We have to say, their coffee is probably the best we’ve had anywhere.